Sunday, November 18, 2007

We link ...

... you decide: World Samina Malik Day December 6th.

I doubt if I'll do anything to honor the day myself. The poem does not strike me as being much of a poem, and I don't know if it was meant to be propaganda or just another bit of so-called transgressive art. I am not terribly sympathetic to those who seem more concerned with the civil rights of people like Malik as opposed to the civil rights of those who might become victims of terrorism. But I do believe in getting out information and letting people make up their own minds. I would note that the principal reason Wilfrid Owen could make poetry out of killing is that he had witnessed it, experienced it, didn't just think about it and conclude that, because he was so sensitive and poetic and all that, that he could write about it as if he had experienced it. Experience trumps all theories and all mere gestures.

9 comments:

  1. Hi Frank,

    The point is that Samina Malik's poem isn't much of a poem, that it was written by someone who was an advanced beginner, someone plying the craft online (not yet good enough to be nominated to IBPC)--and, most importantly, that the act of writing poetry seems to have been used to compound the decision to convict her.

    Bear in mind, that it appears she never harmed anyone, nor contributed the money she is accused of offering. Nothing happened, and she could be sent away. Wars are fought, and peace demonstrations are made, for her to have this freedom.

    I agree with you that Wilfred Owen was present at wartime killing, and so, like Brian Turner and others, is better able to writing about war. Note, though, that the poem "Parable of the Old Men and the Young" was written when he was Malik's age, and was not about a murder that he witnessed. And still, even though not his best poem, is far and away more of a poem than Malik's. Indeed, if we look at the father as the establishment, Old England is killing its young--against better judgment.

    By the way, if anyone is concerned about cross-dressing, pretend you are dressing like a ninja on the 6th. I chuckled when I read one of the Samina Malik bloggers mention this garment comparison.

    Thanks, Frank--appreciate the link and the forum.

    Yours,
    Rus

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  2. Join the campaing

    http://freesaminamalik.blogspot.com/

    http://www.petitiononline.com/poetess/petition.html

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  3. Points well taken, Rus, but could not one argue that Malik is exploiting poetry? We both agree the poem is not very good, and so, ipso facto, she lacks poetic authority. In other words she has used a sort quasi-poetry to make a completely unpoetic statement, a statement, moreover, that is deeply wanting morally. And even if it were a good poem technically, shouldn't the espousal of something morally repulsive figure in one's critical judgment? In my view, a well-crafted sonnet celebrating Auschwitz would not be poetry.

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  4. Hi Frank,

    The slippery slope of using poetry seems settled when we find out that when she was Lyrical Babe, she was writing gangsta poetry. We allow goth and all, so she chose terrorist poetry. Horror is a genre.

    At the Critical Poet, some have taken up an opposing point of view, that whether they agree with Malik's plight, why should she have a day when there are heroes who don't. And it has taken off into a somewhat heated debate at times, and at other times penetrating--everyone there, smart people, poets, just laying what they think on the line. Here are three paragraphs of what I wrote in the latest (the 76th) comment there last night:

    There is no other issue of free speech that zeroes in as much on online poetry, never has been. There is nothing more perfect than Samina Malik's plight.

    What was she doing with that firearms manual? She did not have the weapon. What was she doing with the hand-to-hand combat manual. Isn't there a dojo nearby? Or are these secret moves they do? She was doing with them what we would be doing with them, researching as a writer. Same with the useless poison manual. She's a writer for crissakes.

    I am not asking anyone to adore her, to honor her, to glorify her, to respect her. I might ask that you meet her before you decide not to like her though, but that's your choice. No, she probably wouldn't make it at TCP. The group would decide she is not for them. I can see that. But I can honestly say that when I look at her poetry, I wish I were still workshopping so that I could give her some ideas. Her voice is immature, yet consistent and communicative. As time goes on, I bet she gets pretty good.


    So that covers some of her poetry life before she was Lyrical Terrorist, and while she was. She's apparently given it up. Here's another paragraph from that post:

    As a car salesman, I run into all kinds. One of the shocks I have had, was to find out, that inevitably, just as with the most macho guys, the most goth girls are cream puff sweethearts when you talk to them. It's as if their facade protects their vulnerability and sensitivity. Did you notice how contrite Samina is? Some terrorist. She's a softy.

    Yours,
    Rus

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  5. Well, what do we make of the Mathews poem?

    http://bostonreview.net/BR26.3/mathews.html

    Well-crafted isn't everything, but I do have a little trouble--and I don't think wrongly--with the idea that feelings re: morality should factor too heavily in critical judgment. But then, most of my literary heroes were skalliwags, at best...and often much worse.

    I don't think honors due, but then, convicting her of crimes due partially to her choice to use these particular words is, in the view of many, too much of an honor in itself.

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  6. Hi Gene,

    Interjecting this, on the Mathews poem Butter & Eggs, here's what he says in BAP 2002:

    My intention in composing "Butter & Eggs" was to create poetry unlike any I had previously written. It would be instructive, devoted to everyday subject matter, and eschew not only Oulipian but traditional poetic resources such as metaphor; the result all the same had to be unmistakably poetry. But what is unmistakably poetic? Readers know; but of course they may not agree.

    Yours,
    Rus

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  7. Fair enough, and far be it from me to say something is NOT poetry...I've far too much personally invested in the individual voice at this point in my "career" to start with that noise. I do, however, know what I'm looking for in poetry, and the Mathew's poem strikes me as the "same old epiphany" utilized in a lot of the more theory-bound poetry we're encountering these days. Think "Ode to a Water Faucet." It's an odd paradox, but in the search for the truly original (by my reckoning already a misguided enterprise), there are a number of writers so ensconced in material comfort that they appear to be unable to truly engage anything outside the boundaries of that material comfort. So they turn to recipes, and theorize about poetry being made fresh by scuttling the resources readily at hand. The poem in question strikes me as a monument to boredom, not unlike Bukowski's numerous prattlings on about the cockroaches crawling across his typewriter while he can't think of anything to write. Surely, in times such as our own--which, I think, can be safely described as "interesting," there are more pressing matters to be given voice. Surely, also, the editors of BAP could see far enough beyond their own navels to recognize any one of a hundred poems that resonates far beyond what Mathews offers in "Butter and Eggs."

    I don't for an instant imagine that Samina Malik's poetry is a suitable substitute. Were I forced into a decision as to which to include, I would go with the Mathews piece...but I'd hate making the decision, and I'm a little confounded by the fact that both poets were honored...though in very different ways.

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  8. Hi Gene,

    Part of all this being different for the sake of difference, this "experimentation" beyond the call of being a poet, comes from that poetry was suppose to stay into form before. When L. Cranmer-Byng (1872-1945) served poetry readers by translating Ssu-K’ung T’u (834-903), he cast the poems into end rhyme and mostly iamb. But Ssu-K’ung T’u was an innovator of Chinese poetics. Yet--how else was Cranmer-Byng to bring this Chinese poet to English poetry readers?

    That restriction of form has been taken away for poets in the last hundred years, thus setting the poets into a new-found freedom, such that if you write a poem, then I write one cast similarly, I am in tribute to the form you have trailblazed and my poem needs to acknowledge that. This is part of the reason that there has been a return to form--at least the poet can write the musing of the poem without worrying about integrating tribute.

    On the other hand, now that we have all been released from iambs and end rhymes, what else is out there? Some of the trailblazers have found fruitful clearings. Significantly, Robert Creeley was the guest editor of BAP 2002, and probably the selector of Mathews' poem--but I don't know this for sure.

    Yours,
    Rus

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